Some schools have debated if they should make every single student participate in extracurricular activities. I believe that they should not make kids do extracurricular activities they don't want to do. It would be extra work for the school and it would be bad for the students. If the principal decided to change the school's system so that each and every student would have to do an extracurricular activity it would end up negatively for most students. The main reasons it would be bad are many children will not have the time to do work they shouldn't have to do, kids are already stressed enough with their school work and other things, and many kids who are being forced into doing this probably wouldn't enjoy these activities. So because of these reasons, I believe that we should just keep our school's system the same and the school should not make someone do an unnecessary activity that they didn't want to take part in in the first place.

One of the more relevant reasons that proves that the school shouldn't be able to have this power is so many kids have too much on their plate that they must do, and they just don't have the time to complete all of this. While some may say that kids have too much free time and we should give them something to do so they aren't on electronics, I strongly disagree with that statement. I am a student, and a majority of my peers take part in many other activities, such as sports, musical instruments, plays, and any other things along those lines, that wouldn't allow them to have any spare time to do another activity. In fact, according to a study performed by Harvard University, almost 85 percent of students participate in after school activities that take up more than 8 hours of time per week. This would include practicing the activity and for many activities you would have to compete. For example, one of my friends, Generic_Name, does many activities. She plays on a competitive lacrosse team, she plays a musical instrument, and she takes all honor classes. She barely finishes all of her homework, and she has stupendous time management skills. If she had to take part in another after school activity, she wouldn't have time to do it all. Because kids do other things, if you made them partake in a new activity they would also become a lot more stressed.

Students are already stressed enough with school and other activities. If you make them participate in another activity, that will make their stress levels go up and could possibly push them over the edge. It's obvious that students won't have the best time management skills because they are kids. Since they don't have these skills, they will end up being stressed about completing their work. In a survey I compiled with seventh and eighth graders at my middle school, I discovered that a whopping 94 percent of students considered themselves stressed. 76 percent even went as far to say that they are overly stressed. This puts into perspective how students are already very stressed without the excess activities. Personally, I partake in a travel volleyball team, a musical instrument, all honor classes, I make sure that I study enough and do all of my homework, and I make time to spend maximum amounts of time with my family and friends as possible. I manage to finish all of this, but many days I do not get much sleep. On most week days I get about 6 hours and the recommended amount of sleep for a thirteen year old is about 8. It can get very tough to finish all of my tasks I have to complete in one day. I know that if my school made me participate in another extracurricular activity I would not be able to complete all of this work I previously had to finish. And obviously school would be my top priority to complete, so I would possibly have to drop some of my hobbies and interests that I love. Another reason we shouldn't enforce this rule is that many kids that the school is forcing to do the activity probably won't enjoy it.

If the school enforces this new policy, many students will be unhappy because the activities the schools have to offer do not interest them at all. The main extracurricular activities that people partake at my school are plays and clubs where you can compete in, such as Model United Nations, debate club, Science Olympiad, and many others. At my school with over 1,000 students, only about 100 decide to join these clubs. These clubs only appeal to certain people that enjoy academics. If you're interested in things related to sports, my school does not have much to offer for you. When my sister was in middle school, about 7 years ago, they had very few clubs. They had 3 official clubs. Our mom made her choose a club to participate in. All that she could choose from was debate club, chess club, and homework club.

She had little to no interest in doing any of these clubs that she thought were boring and dumb. She ended up doing chess club, but she ended up hating it immensely. She said that everyone was better than her and she didn't even know how to play. This all happened because she was forced to pick an activity from three, horrible sounding, activities. This all would not have happened if no one had made her do an activity she despised. The same thing will end up happening to many children if the schools make them participate in activities they don't wish to do. Kids doing something that they don't want to do will end up with them being unhappy, which will end up in a negative learning environment.

Many kids will suffer majorly if a school was to go through with this ridiculous plan of forcing people to do an extracurricular activity that they do not wish to take part in. In the end, this will benefit basically nobody, because if someone really needed or wanted to participate in extra activities, they could without having to affect every person other than themselves in the school. Many would be upset with this new plan, so I believe that it would be best to keep our system the same.